Situations/Simulacra: Artur Barrio’s Challenges to the Brazilian Art System in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s
Situations/Simulacra: Artur Barrio’s Challenges to the Brazilian Art System in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s

Summary/Abstract: Artur Barrio’s installations/“situations” from the late 1960s and early 1970s embody one of the most vigorous endeavours to expose the political repression and the crimes committed by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Barrio’s artistic practice of that period also contributed to a reconfiguration of the Brazilian visual language, propounding a radical aesthetic that dismissed the established forms of expression to empower a stronger connection between art and this country’s reality (whether social, political, or economic). This article briefly reviews Barrio’s politically charged artistic projects from his early period, proposing the concept of 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑎 for a more precise definition of their relation with the oppressive political reality, on the one hand, and with the spectator, on the other hand.

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